


it's therapeutic somehow

by afileonyou



Category: Blur (Band), Music RPF
Genre: Awkward Flirting, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gender-neutral Reader, Graham Coxon/reader - Freeform, M/M, a lot of awkward flirting, blur - Freeform, graham coxon - Freeform, it feels like i was possessed when i wrote this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-20
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:02:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28886541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afileonyou/pseuds/afileonyou
Summary: Two jaded art school graduate students, stuck as teaching assistants on Zoom, bond over their academic frustrations and mutual inability to pay attention in class.
Relationships: Graham Coxon/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	it's therapeutic somehow

**Author's Note:**

> hey everyone! this is baby's first published fic so please be kind i guess.
> 
> i tried to keep the reader as gender-neutral as possible, at the cost of some vagaries about the character's physical features, but hey who gives a shit about how you look when you're just on zoom every day??
> 
> beta'd by my super ultimate beta reader YL. thanks for putting up with all my bollocks.
> 
> hope you enjoy :)

Waking up at 8AM on Monday morning isn’t exactly your cup of tea – and if it’s _anyone’s_ cup of tea, you’d like to pick their brain and find out just why that is.

Mornings aren’t your strong suit, and the prospect of waking up early to earn money doesn’t quite sweeten the pot today. Especially not when you’re faced with the prospect of having to do this for twelve more Mondays, almost all in a row. Twelve Mondays of waking up early, ingesting more than a litre’s worth of caffeine, and sitting in front of a computer screen to watch nine other tiny little faces on Zoom for eight hours. 

You’re a teaching assistant. Your class assignment this term? Multi-modal Narratives – an eight-hour-long studio class that caters to your expertise in illustration and comic art, but not to your inability to wake up early.

Normally you’d be a lot more excited about teaching. It is, after all, what you want to be doing with your life once you have to become a functioning member of society. A large part of the reason why you chose to attend the postgraduate program at your art school was because they let you start building up your teaching experience early, by assigning you as an aide to classes that you could already be teaching yourself. But this morning? This morning, it is a Herculean task just to muster up any enthusiasm for being alive. Your hair is a mess, your eyebags are particularly pronounced, and your last ounce of serotonin deserted you the minute your alarm went off. 

It’s going to be a great day. And by great, you mean extremely shitty.

You wonder about what your students are going to be like as you wait for your electric kettle to reach boiling. Most, if not all of them, will probably be undergraduates, and most of those will probably be second-years. You pray to whatever gods are listening that there will be another graduate student among them – this pandemic has gone on for way too long, you barely know five people in your own faculty, and you are in desperate need of a friend. Your program requires grad students to take some undergraduate courses, but what with so many courses on offer, the chances of that are slim. Still, you hold out for hope, as you stand at your kitchen counter, bleary-eyed and in desperate need of a cuppa.

When the water boils, you toss two teabags into a full-sized beer stein and soak them in boiling water. Starting your morning by drinking an obscene amount of tea – 1.2 litres of it, to be exact – from a beer stein is a conscious choice. You feel compelled to make this choice partly because you _will_ fall asleep at your laptop if you do not pump your veins full of caffeine, and partly because you are twenty-three years old and in graduate school, and when you’re in graduate school you no longer have to give a fuck about whatever anyone other than your advisors might think. 

The caffeine has barely kicked in by the time you boot up Zoom and arrange yourself before the camera, trying not to look as frazzled as you feel. It is 8:32AM. Two minutes past the official starting time for your class. Seven out of nine students are already on the call.

All of them have their cameras on – you know this will become an increasingly rare occurrence as the term wears on. You take this chance to briefly survey the faces before you. One of them looks dangerously close falling back asleep; closer than you are. You size him up – dark hair, glorified bowlcut, thick black glasses. An unsurprising aesthetic. Geek chic is indeed back in style at art school.

Your professor blinks into the meeting a moment later, blustering about not being able to get his kids seated in front of their own school Zoom meetings. After he delivers the customary class intro speech, he suggests that you, the teaching assistant, introduce yourself to the class. You gladly state your name, your pronouns, and your status as a Visual Communication Design postgraduate student. You express your excitement to be working with everyone this term, and offer your assistance with both technical trouble and artistic critique during the class. As soon as you are done speaking, you turn away from the camera and take a gigantic swig of piping hot tea from the beer stein.

The students begin to introduce themselves. As you had guessed, most of them are second-year undergraduates, with aims to work in either animation or comics. You while away the icebreaker checking your social media accounts and firing off a few messages to a long-distance pal. But then you hear it. And you pause.

Another graduate student.

“My name’s Graham,” says a reedy voice in your earphones. “I’m a first-year graduate student, um, in the Painting and Drawing department, and, err, I’m from Essex.”

You look at the person who is speaking and find that it’s the bespectacled sleepy guy from earlier. On your screen, he appears to be looking right at you, but you know he is probably just looking into the beady eye of his webcam.

It is then that you realise you have seen him before.

You can’t believe this. You have to hold back a chuckle as you type out a private message to “Graham C.”:

_hey aren’t you the guy who fell over on camera during the painting/viscom grad student orientation_

You study his little Zoom window; you see his eyes flick across your message, then widen ever so slightly. He hunches over a little as he starts typing.

_Oh my god_ , comes his reply a moment later. _I was hoping you wouldn’t recognise me._

When you look back at the Zoom window, he is casting a sheepish look at his camera that you know is meant for you. You crack a smile.

_no chance, that was the least boring thing that happened during orientation. you sir have a spot reserved for you in my memory permanently_

The professor is saying something about a multi-modal narrative having no real fixed form. You barely register any of this as Graham directs a small, shy smile at his camera, and technically, at you too.

_I have this terrible habit of not turning off my video or muting my mic even when I can. And because of that, every single grad student in both our departments has heard me yell “Fuck!” as I tripped over my computer charger and fell on my face._

You actually laugh out loud at this, but luckily for you, nobody else hears it, because you _don’t_ have a bad habit of not muting your mic.

_look on the bright side_ , you type out, as you take another swig from the beer stein. _you’re already a legend and it’s barely the start of first term_.

Somewhere in the periphery of your consciousness, the professor is saying something about storytelling. You would pay more attention, but the constant exchange of covert glances between you and Graham is taking up the rest of your attention span.

_Are you drinking lager at half past eight in the morning?_ he asks.

_are you trying to move the subject away from your public embarrassment?_ you shoot back.

_Seriously. That’s a LOT of lager._

_it’s not lager it’s english breakfast. though fuck i WISH it was lager. how else am i supposed to stomach waking up early on a monday morning_

Graham raises his eyebrows, lifting a mug to his lips. You appreciate the subtle indication that you are not alone in your struggle.

_Okay, in that case I don’t blame you. I’m almost done with my morning coffee and I’m still barely awake. We do what we must to survive, I guess._

You hadn’t realised you were smiling all the way through his messages, but you realise this as your smile grows even wider. There is a funny feeling in your stomach. Maybe it’s the caffeine.

_finally!!! someone who understands my struggle!!_ you type emphatically.

Onscreen, you see Graham let out a laugh of his own.

_I don’t just understand the struggle, I LIVE it. I got put into the 9AM slot for ALL THREE graduate painting seminars this term._

You blink. Perhaps this man’s misfortune is even worse than you’d thought. _fuck me that’s awful,_ you reply. _sorry_.

_Don’t apologise for my shit luck_ , he types back. _Is this your only early class?_

_nope, i have another 9AM studio class later this week_ , you tell him regretfully, recalling that the rest of your class schedule is also a hell of your own making.

Graham looks like he is typing out a response, but your professor chooses that moment to end his long and winding introductory speech and direct everyone to the first real class exercise. He makes a face, as if to say “Well, what can you do?”, and you nod back in acknowledgement. As the TA, you probably shouldn’t be encouraging the students to distract themselves anyway. But even in spite of this, it somehow still is disappointing when the class heads deep into a writing exercise, and your message remains unanswered.

You resign yourself to doing nothing but giving students feedback and troubleshooting technical issues for the seven remaining hours of class – tasks which you are actually looking forward to, if it means you won’t be sat around twiddling your thumbs. However, just as you take another big gulp of tea from your rapidly-emptying beer stein, you catch a movement out of the corner of your eye.

In his little window on your Zoom call screen, Graham is laughing quietly to himself, looking right at you. The whole tea-in-oversized-mug schtick clearly seems to have stuck with him. You wonder how long he’s been watching you for. You can’t help but smile back at him. Again.

You’ve been doing a lot more smiling than you’d expected to, this morning.

_i know that you find my appearance extremely comical when i am drinking my tea,_ you message him, _but focus on the writing exercise or i’ll call you out!_

_Yes boss_ , he replies almost immediately.

Onscreen, you’re both grinning at each other. _With_ each other.

Maybe this job isn’t going to be that much of a drag after all.

* * *

The rest of the studio class goes by quicker than you’d expected. Most of it was spent hunkering down, working on your own projects while the students chipped away at the start of their first class assignments. Your professor errs on the side of being too verbose sometimes, and likes the sound of his own voice enough to talk for ages and ages, which didn’t leave you with much space to provide your own feedback to individual students who’d requested a critique of their preliminary project plans.

But hey, at least your struggle hadn’t gone completely unnoticed. During a particularly long ramble, a message had popped up in your chat window; small red letters denoting that it is meant for you and only you.

_Blah blah blah,_ it read. _Will this man ever let you speak?_ _You’re a teaching assistant, not a silent unpaid intern._

There hadn’t been much time for more full-blown conversations, but Graham had continued to message you here and there, throughout the class. His little quips never failed to make you crack up – despite his outward appearance hinting at shyness, he is sharp, funny, and has a seemingly bottomless well of witty remarks to draw on. Thinking back on it now, you almost regret having left the Zoom call without asking him for some kind of social media handle you could talk to him on outside of class.

Tuesday comes and goes like a passing thought, and the next thing you know, you’re waking up early again, but this time it is Wednesday and you’ll actually have to be working on assignments during this class.

Today the beer stein of tea does not make a reappearance – for the first time in a long, long time, you managed to get to bed at a decent hour last night, and are feeling shockingly well-rested. When you sit down in front of your computer, sketchbook and pencils at the ready, you are almost, dare you say it… _excited_ for class.

Advanced Drawing Studio is the closest you could get to a more senior illustration class – the graduate-level drawing seminars had all been filled up by the time you’d gotten down to choosing your classes, and so you’d been forced to make do with the highest-level undergraduate drawing class you could find. The chances of finding another colleague of yours in this class are slim, mostly because, well… the rest of them are all probably in those seminars that you didn’t manage to sign up for in time.

Except you are proven wrong the minute you hop onto the Zoom call. In the second little window from the top left is a familiar face, complete with thick black-rimmed spectacles and slightly mussed-up bowlcut, whose eyes widen a split second after you notice him.

_graham?! well well well, fancy seeing you again so soon!!_

You hit send just as he says, _So, uh… what a coincidence! Though I’m not exactly complaining…_

Both of you exchange a shared smile – something that is becoming a common occurrence between you two. Strangely, you find yourself hoping that they don’t stop coming any time soon.

Your fingers fly over your keyboard as you type up another message. 

_what are you doing here? you’re in the painting and drawing department, shouldn’t you be in a graduate seminar???_

_Funny you should ask that,_ comes his initial reply. He remains hunched over his own keyboard, clearly typing up another response, but is interrupted as the professor makes her appearance on the call.

“Hi, everyone!” she says breathlessly, as if she has run up the stairs to get to her computer. “It looks like everyone’s here, so why don’t we get started? Welcome to Advanced Drawing Studio! I’m Georgie Smith, your professor, and my teaching assistant for this class is Graham Coxon – hi, Graham! – who’s a graduate student from the Painting and Drawing department.”

Your jaw drops, and you instinctively shut it before anyone can notice that you are gaping like a buffoon. The situation is almost too hilarious to be true.

_no way,_ you message him. _absolutely no way this is happening right now._

There’s that smile of his again, lighting up the screen. Is it a trick of the light glinting off his glasses, or is there a mischievous sort of twinkle in his eye?

_Guess we get to take turns bossing each other around,_ he types back. _Now pay attention, or else I’LL call YOU out._

Graham punctuates that last message with a winking emoji. The _nerve_.

You look back at him, taking in the playful half-smile on his face. To most other people, you know his expression would just be perceived as one of those unconscious quirks a face develops when looking at something else on a screen; a moment of being caught unaware on camera. This makes these back-and-forths of yours feel intimate, somehow. In a sea of people, only you would know the reason for his smile. Only you can tell he’s even smiling at all.

_yes boss_ , you type back. When you catch him looking at you, you make sure to wink at him. Emoji be damned.

To your surprise, the faintest hint of a blush reddens his cheeks. It only takes him a moment to recover, though, and he manages to pull himself together just as the professor calls on him by name to talk a little bit about his own drawing practice. Watching him improvise a semi-professional-sounding speech, you’d never have guessed that he’d been ribbing you privately just seconds ago if you hadn’t known.

When the next message from Graham pops up, he is still talking; his words having slowed down only a little as he typed it out.

_Okay, I take that back. You actually look like you’re fully paying attention now and it’s making me nervous._

You raise your eyebrows.

_i make you nervous?_

_More than a little, yeah._ _But don’t let it get to your head._

The message catches you off guard. Unexpectedly, you find yourself stumbling over the layers of meaning that it could possibly hold. Are you overthinking this, or are you thinking exactly what you should be thinking? Is he… flirting with you?!

Whichever one it is, this is going to be one hell of an interesting term.

**Author's Note:**

> comments and feedback appreciated!! not gonna lie am kind of shitting myself about publishing stuff for real here after lurking for ages.


End file.
